Sirat Bani Hilal, an epic Arabic poem that recounts the tale of the travels of the Bedouin Banu Hilal tribe through Saudi Arabia and North Africa, was performed hundreds of times everywhere in this region in the past decades.
However, the same poem received its most special performance to date by the Abou Gheit band recently.
The band, which was founded in 2021, performed the poem at Darb 1718 Centre for Contemporary Arts in Old Cairo in the southern part of the Egyptian capital.
The singer performed the poem against a background of rebab and percussion instruments, such as the drum and the duff, being played by other band members.
Sirat Bani Hilal was included in UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2008.
Band founder, Mohammed Abouzeid, said his band strives to revive ancient Egyptian and Arab cultural traditions, especially for local audiences in the big cities and also for foreigners.
The members of Abouzeid band are mostly followers of the Sufi Ahmadiyya order. They are all disciples of Sufi sheikh, Hassan Abou Gheit. Abouzeid is a direct devotee of the sheikh.
“I carry the tradition and musical heritage of my family,” Abouzeid, told the Egyptian Mail.
He is the principal drummer and instrument maker of the band.
He hails from a family whose members were mostly musicians and dervishes.
Abouzeid and his fellow band members have a mission, namely to acquaint those living in urban areas in Egypt with their country’s cultural heritage and identity.
Nonetheless, in effect, the band is acquainting the whole world with this heritage and this identity. It has travelled everywhere outside Egypt, including to Italy in May 2021.
It organised a concert of zikr, a ritual prayer practiced by Sufis for the purpose of glorifying God, at the University of Rome.
The concert was part of a lecture by Kawkab Tawfik, an ethnomusicologist and a researcher at the French Institute for Oriental Archaeology.
Tawfik was a strong backer of Abou Gheit, amounting to a mentor of the band.
The band also participated recently in an international festival in the Italian city of Sicily on the Mediterranean, where it performed Sirat Bani Hilal as well.
“Egypt’s musical heritage has a huge and diverse repertoire that can be lost,” Abouzeid warned.
His band works tooth and nail to rescue this repertoire by reintroducing it in a new light, bucking traditional contexts and adapting to new stages and audiences.
Abouzeid and most of his band’s members were fortunate enough to be exposed to this cultural heritage early on in their lives.
They believe their mission is to keep this cultural heritage alive and also pass it on to new generations.
To do this, the band uses traditional instruments. Interestingly enough, the members of the band create these instruments with their own hands.
They have a workshop were they manufacture musical tools, such as duffs, drums and rebab.
The band has around ten members, a number that keeps changing according to the needs of the performances and the type of audiences.
Most of those who go to Darb 1718 Centre for Contemporary Arts are young people who usually look for something different and want to know their roots.
“The centre gives us the chance to have a beautiful and genuine interaction, one that enriches us and the audiences attending our concerts,” Abouzeid said.
His bad is also liked by foreign audiences. In Italy, the audience watching the band’s concert wanted the band members to keep playing.
“I hope we can hold many more concerts in other countries in the future,” Abouzeid said. “We want to keep this heritage alive and deliver our message to Egyptians and people in other countries.”
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